It must have been a grand villa. The scattered mosaics depicting gardens blooming with honeysuckle, verbena and kaffir lime trees. How long has it been since this courtyard contained bees or live lemons or the flesh of plumeria? For the next few minutes it is yours then the cocksure trucks will arrive with their salt and cold hammers to begin construction of the road.

When electricity was still magic and the black of night so complete stars still cast shadows, there were towers that lit entire towns with a blaze so brilliant it were as if a comet were landing. These were the arclights. Entire fields of summer berries, the soft whisp of smoke from a distant fire, the new patent leather shoes, the French lavender perfume, all lit for the first time by a flameless torch that banished the thief and his razor.

This place is perfect. Raspberry red vinyl seats, fresh apricot preserves on checked tables, oregano rich marinara on a stove. How on Earth did you never stop here before? The water is clean and cold and the service warm. Your English muffin is spread with a confounding strawberry jalapeno jam, which pricks you awake just in time to see the cement truck skid and collapse.

Their baskets swelled with tiny blueberries, they returned to the blanket at the edge of the ocean. It is early August and the Nova Scotia summer has been good for hunting. A celebration of Texas BBQ brisket, chocolate milk, marionberry pie, Swisher Sweets and cherry blossoms is ended abruptly by the leather seated Cadillac crashing through the pines, churning the dense soil and shockingly halted by the slate cliffside.

In the desert there is a road that ends without warning. That is where you must set up camp. It is at the foot of the mountain and beside a vernal stream. The tattered map says that beneath a mulberry tree a box is buried. Tomorrow you will search, today you will let your senses deepen: wild blueberry, fire roasted chiles, pure marionberry preserves, rose hips, toasted marshmallow, tufa tower, cracked fresh bay leaf, dark chocolate espresso beans, cut flowers and lightning struck tree.

After hours lost hiking without water or food, a field of ripe huckleberries and English strawberries opens before you. Amazingly, there is a clean mineral spring and no bears for now --- county fair blueberry pie, mint julep, jack pine, hookah smoke, cherry cola, chicory coffee, spent shotgun shell, lavender, charred french toast, purple plum, roast chestnut and sweet maple. Beautiful, robust and precise like a 300 pound modern dancer.

In Canada when you’re planting a garden, it is important to select plants that look good in all seasons. You need plants that are full and lush in summer, turn bright colors in fall, have beautiful skeletons in winter and perfect flowers in spring. When it’s done right, it can be a revelation. Borderlands is a wine that strikes that kind of balance, it’s flashy and full in and is bright and articulate at the right time. Think of it as the perfect guide through a full evening: dapper and charming without being a jerk about it. The wine makes an entrance with an opulent nose of charred lamb shank, cassis, black earth, aquavit and cedar, the palate has the welcome force and precision of a well placed compliment with flavors of strawberry pie, coffee, violet pastilles, crisp pepper and lasting chocolate tannins. Just like a Canadian garden, nothing takes over except at its time.

White peach, tarragon, peeled pear skin, wintergreen -- rolling down a myrtle covered hill in the early spring woods Vanilla greek yogurt, wild clover honey, fresh tennis ball, oleander -- hugging in a sage banked mountain stream with a summer-long goodbye 9 volt battery-like acidity, key lime pie, white gummy bears, lemon sno-cone -- tubing behind a boat, slapping your face against the joyous water.

From the black walnut banister to the vanilla white floors to the cherrywood portico to the passed platters of Leonard’s dry rubbed ribs and the gentlefolk jostling for juleps on the veranda, you can be sure this place is haunted. At midnight the house is soaked in secret cigars, Italian espresso, polished side-by-side Purdey’s and felt-muffled footsteps. When the moon is full, a silver Rolls Royce draws rich wake in the black soil of the lawn.

Giants are surprisingly excellent dancers. Every fall, when our storehouses are full, they come down from the hills to dance and chase the King’s Luna moths through the violets. Their dances while beautiful, always end with our warehouses smashed into the soft soil. The giants kick around our canned cherries, preserved blackberries and Cheerwine. They dance jigs on our stores of black chocolate, dried hibiscus, Genmaicha tea and chicory. When they’re done little is left, but they will help us rebuild. Always with a cheers of creme de violette over freshly opened boxes of nails.

What if it all were real? The nameless berries of the moon, the Caliph’s cherry orchard, the homeless stars, Rousseau’s plump jungles, Enki’s eaten flowers, the incense heavy air surrounding Scheherazade, the solitary rose of asteroid B-612 pining for her prince?

When I was travelling in the hills of Nicaragua I came across a small, forgotten church nestled in the jungle growth outside of a town. The church didn’t have a roof, the windows had long since been smashed and the floors were littered with rubbish and plants. Looking up, it was all tree boughs and birds and late sunlight and bright colors. Honestly, the place felt so free. Fragment reminds me of that church, it has an improbable freshness and big shoulders. It’s like opening the window on a rain-heavy garden: herbal scents of lemongrass, fresh sage, tangerine oil and young mango lead you out the garden and into a palate reminiscent of a redwood forest at twilight with flavors of juniper, honey comb, sea spray and persimmon. A wine full of the early nerves before beginning a new journey.

Oh Lord was it worth cashing in all the miles. 2 weeks and nothing but first class and the Four Seasons. Let them suffer through winter, you’re on the South Island, the flink-lock bluster will be there when you get back, for now your life is nothing but soften white Lily petals, Meyer lemon ice, coriander oil, oceanside quilts, fresh opened Uni, orange blossom water, grapefruit, dewy pine, salt spray and late evening bike rides.

This is a James Bond ski chase down an Alpine peak and through the dense cobbled streets of some forgotten village -- Gooseberry, crushed oyster shell, sweet lime, detonated dynamite, lemon seltzer, clove spiked orange, white Gatorade, Red Pine needle, peach Schnapps, white smoke and brand new novel. Fresh, dry and exuberant with a rolling mouthfeel.

The surface of the lake is glass-flat, frozen solid and clear. It’s June above the Arctic Circle and the world is in limbo. A cabin is poofing cedar smoke and the impossible orchard is in bloom with Rainer cherry blossoms and Bosch pears. You savagely peel a Satsuma and add the flesh to your sweet lime spritz. The rind falls onto wild oregano, a heliotrope and a slate skipping stone. With each skip, the surface of the lake is shattered, as the sun burns like magnesium fire. Filtered and Unfiltered versions available

You made it through to the bluffs over the beach. There were no guards. There is a tiny impossible garden here overgrown with jasmine, lemon verbena, woodsorrel and a blooming pear tree. You had no idea what to expect when you climbed through the fence of Red Gate Farm, but the seersucker clouds are perfect with your pilfered Tieguanyin tea, young plums and chiffon cake.

There’s a true art to the simplistic decadence of a proper picnic. It’s not about having fancy stemware, French macarons or a candelabra (although all are delightful). It’s about creating a revelation, the surprise of re-discovering the joy of familiar food and friends in a different setting. The 2011 “Fragment” recalls what magic can happen at those late afternoon, sun-dappled picnics. Scents of Meyer lemon, sea breeze, sweet pea, warm quilts and fresh honeycomb are combined with a palate of lemongrass, Bosc pear, coriander and key lime pie. Think one part finding lost Valentine at the bottom of a drawer, one part sun warmed citrus from a friend’s backyard.

It’s the way velvet makes shadows feel comfortable. It’s the snap of pink-peppercorn on a cherry red sunburned shoulder. It’s the plum in a cold Dr. Pepper. It’s the weight of asphalt and huckleberry bundt cake in the pre-rain air. It’s the way that charred poblano peppers and cedar mix seamlessly into summer. It’s the flesh and juice of sweet pressed blueberries. It’s the wafted pipe smoke from a passing old man. It’s all that and forever. I wish you were here.

The siren is screaming at the searchlights. This well appointed library is no shelter, but what better place await the edge of the world than here. A humidor well stocked with Cohiba Siglos and a decanter of rare Alpine kirsch shares the buffet with a glass bowl of ripe red currants, wild blueberries and raspberries. A bomb hits the coffee roaster across the street, ripping the heavy earth and tearing the bay laurel in the yard. Let it come, let it come you think as you light a cigar.

This is the memory of the abandonved abbey you discovered when in lithe summer nights, when you were young and alone. Crushed violet, ripped jeans, quarter sawn spruce, blueberry cake, warmed sage, buckwheat honey, anisette, chocolate brownie batter, ancient incense, cherry-skin cigar, palo santo smudge and sassafras bark.

6,000 miles, 3 layovers and lost luggage, but you made it. A seven course meal at the house of Francis Mallman. Greeted by charred asian pear, yerba mate and perfect pata negra, the night takes off like a Saturn V. Course after course of lamb shank, morcilla, clove rubbed flank steak, sweetened oak smoke, and amarone poached cherries the meal is capped off with a cinnamon dusted pot du creme, Chef’s Romeo y Julieta and recited poetry under the moon.

Sackcloth & Ashes is a wine that could have been made in that kind of world, it’s what happens when the familiar meets the exotic, and reminds me of snooping around a forgotten New Orleans mansion at sundown looking for ghosts. Scents of honeysuckle, pipe tobacco, cherry skin, nutmeg and violets are suddenly joined by an ancient and regal spirit on the palate with flavors of adobo spice, smoked blackberry, frankincense and Mexican hot chocolate with tannins that’ll prick up your arm hair and chase you out the door.

Spiced hot chocolate warm chocolate croissant, cherry rugelach, country dust, red velvet cake, new bones, prairie fire, hot wooden fence, crisp pizza crust, baseball-sized ripe blackberry, fire roasted poblano pepper and sweet espresso. Massive and balanced, with achy tannins.

I learned how to be a strong willed woman from my grandmother. Through hundreds of stories, slaps on the wrist (although never mine) and powerful hugs, she showed me that going easy on others isn’t always the best way to show you love them. “Solacer” owes much to tales told over evenings in my grandmother’s kitchen: scents of orange Pekoe tea, black currant jam, sarsaparilla and roasted beets open to an elegant palate of brandy soaked cherries, chocolate cream, spiced meats and raspberry coulis. Compelling and complex, it leaves you leaning in, waiting for the next story to unfold.

Above the heavy breath of the jungle it is Christmas. Ancient leather bowls of frothed Oaxacan chocolate are passed between scoops of mountain berries and swigs of rare kirsch. Bells ring, the fog lifts, the early sky is illuminated in stars. The feast ensues: fire roasted peppers, charred sweet pork with sumac and herbed heavy cream. Tonight, even the stones are dancing.

The train across the continent took a year off her life. She had arrived in New York from Paris with expensive spiced cigarettes, Iraqi dates, alpine currants and calf leather luggage. A lifetime later, here she is breaking through august chaparral and sage, felling white fir and resting her heart on the whiskered curves of cypress. This is her life on the edge of the earth, born from a young book a world away.

The sun-dense beach is brilliant at sunset. There is a glass of ice water with lemon on the windowsill and a sharp breeze teasing the ocean. On the side table: crisp pear cookies on a plate and a Newcomb vase heavy with June’s flowers: honeysuckle, plumeria, orchids and cherry blossoms. It will be over so soon. Then back inland, to fall